Arcade Fire really lived up to the hype as their set included everything from multi-colored balls that changed color to thanking (multiple times) organizers for giving them their break Saturday at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

I saw the group back in 2005 during their breakout performance at the Coachella festival (I’ll never forget the energy or thousands of people in attendance who appeared to know much of the group’s material) and it’s amazing to see their growth into Grammy Award winning headliners, which they mentioned onstage.

They went through all their hits from 2004’s “Wake Up” to 2010’s “The Suburbs” while keeping the energy through their more than hour set.

Hip-hop star of the moment Wiz Khalifa brought a hazy audience with him at the main Coachella stage Sunday afternoon.

Khalifa’s music celebrates marijuana and partying and the thousands gathered to watch him perform took the message literally as clouds of smoke were constant throughout the 50 minute set.

Audience members loudly pointed out that Khalifa looked stoned but his set still had a lot of energy as he eagerly performed numerous songs off his “Kush & Orange Juice” mixtape like “Waken Baken” and his latest “Rolling Papers” album.

My biggest complaint about the set is Khalifa’s microphone at times was turned down low and his freestyles or a capella lyrices at times were a bit hard to hear. He ended the set with his latest singles “Roll Up” and “Black and Yellow” as the audience loudly cheered in approval.

Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha gave a non-stop performance with drummer Jon Theodore and keyboardist Joey Karam as the group One Day as a Lion Saturday night inside the Mojave tent at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

Rocha jumped, pumped his fists and yelled throughout his sweat-filled set with the picture-perfect sounding Theodore and Karam. Rocha has lost nothing and the group sounded tremendous live.

The group tore through the songs on their “One Day as a Lion” EP including “Wild International” and others while Rocha used an echo effect on his voice to great results. The crowd couldn’t get enough and at one point chanted for the N.W.A. song “….” Tha Police but the song wasn’t performed.

Bay area hip-hop artist Lil B, who had one of the most memorable T-shirt designs with the phrase “Thank You Based God,” gave an energetic set inside the Oasis Dome Saturday night at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

Lil B, also known as the Based God, was joined on stage by Odd Future during his set and the group danced along side and one of the members even jumped into the audience at one point but I couldn’t see which one.

After an opening intro of The Pack song “Vans,” which he is also on, Lil B went into “Wonton Soup” and a bunch of songs with titles I can’t mention on a newspaper website but the crowd loudly sang along to every one of them.

During his set, Lil B said he was going to watch Arcade Fire which drew cheers from the audience.

At the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Saturday, R & B artist Erykah Badu experienced some sound issues with her microphone that caused a lot of feedback during her music.

Nearly every song she performed on the Coachella stage had the high-pitched whistle feedback that just destroys musical sets. Her band never experienced any issues just her.

Badu was visibly displeased and at times she asked the sound enginner to correct various microphone issues but the problem never went away.

Meanwhile, Broken Social Scene also had issues at the Coachella stage about 30 minutes after Badu. The overall sound being turned up too loud, which caused the acoustics to bleed into the nearby Outdoor Theatre and the larger Coachella field area. The sound engineers seemed to recognize the problem though and turned it down, which led to one being able to idenfity the individual band instruments easier.

The organizers at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival added something this year for those of us not able to make it to the front of stage: large video screens.

Previously only the headlining Coachella stage and the Outdoor Theatre had the screens on both sides of the stage but every tent now features them (except for the Oasis Dome, which is not a tent).

On Friday night, the Aquabats and the disco electro musician Robyn made great use of them during their performances at the Mojave Tent.

While the Aquabats had images of movie stars, professional wrestling stars and stuffed animals (who were all “playing” on time to the instrumentals, Robyn simply had the focus on her movements and at times her band.

This might not sound like much but when you’re stuck behind thousands of taller screaming fans it makes for such a better experience. Instead of just hearing the music you can actually see what’s going on.